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“Genius” Humanitarian Physician Paul Farmer Will Speak at Davidson
Dr. Paul Farmer will speak at Davidson on Sunday evening, February 19.
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2/14/2006
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
(Associate Professor of Biology David Wessner has written an essay about the issues Dr. Farmer will address in his talk. You can access that essay by clicking here.)
Humanitarian physician Dr. Paul Farmer, the subject of the 2003 Tracy Kidder book Mountains Beyond Mountains, will speak at Davidson College on Sunday evening, February 19, about his work on behalf of better health care for the world's poor.
His talk, entitled “Infectious Disease Treatment in Resource-Limited Settings,” begins at 7 p.m. in Duke Family Performance Hall. There is no charge to attend, but tickets are required. No phone reservations are accepted, but tickets are available in person weekdays 10-4 at the Alvarez College Union ticket office. Tickets will also be available at the door an hour prior to the event.
Dr. Farmer is said to have done more than any other American physician to provide quality health care to the world's most impoverished populations. In 1993, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius award” in recognition of his work.
In 1987 he co-founded Partners In Health (PIH), an international organization that provides direct health care services and advocates on behalf of the poor. PIH has battled infectious diseases and provided health care to hundreds of thousands, first in Haiti and now in Peru, Russia and the United States.
Farmer conducts an active clinical practice at a rural Haitian charity hospital, the Clinique Bon Sauveur, focusing on diseases that disproportionately afflict the poor. He has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies for AIDS and tuberculosis (including multidrug-resistant tuberculosis), successfully challenging policymakers and critics who claim that quality health care is impossible to deliver in resource-poor settings.
Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, the Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House, 2003), has enjoyed a broad readership. Many colleges and universities have selected it as the common reading for incoming students.
Dr. Farmer has written extensively about health and human rights and the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases. His works include Pathologies of Power (2003), Infections and Inequalities (1998), The Uses of Haiti (1994), and AIDS and Accusation (1992). In addition, he is co-editor of Women, Poverty, and AIDS (1996) and of The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (1999).
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,700 students. Since its founding by Presbyterians in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently recognized as one of the leading liberal arts colleges in the country.
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